Human settlements department can’t meet demand for housing

Thuso Mhlabane moved to Johannesburg in 2014 from KwaZulu-Natal in the hope of a better life, and settled in the informal settlement of eMadelakufa in Tembisa. He was optimistic that his application for government housing would secure a stable home for his family. 

But a decade later, Mhlabane is unemployed, lives alone in his deceased uncle’s shack, and is still on the waiting list for a government house.

“I have left everything I know behind and came to try my luck in the City of Gold. Ten years later and I still have nothing. I am scared to even go back home because I have nothing to offer my children,” he said.

Mhlabane wishes he could speak directly to housing authorities and show them the dire conditions in which he lives, and to get a proper explanation about the delays in his getting a house under the Breaking New Ground (BNG) programme, previously known as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP).

The programme was introduced in 1994 by Nelson Mandela to address the legacy of apartheid’s spatial planning that isolated people from job opportunities and amenities close to the city.

It was intended to provide people like Mhlabane with safe shelter and sanitation. But the delivery of houses has slowed. 

In its annual performance plan for 2023-24, the department of human settlements said it had delivered “substantial housing opportunities over the past five years even though the delivery numbers depict a serious decline”.

During the 2022-23 financial year, the department provided 25 037 housing units, down from 77  626 in 2018-19. 

Nozipho Zulu, the head of communications at the department of human settlements, said there were several factors behind the slow delivery. 

“In the past few years the reduction can be attributed to an increase in material supply and labour cost, which resulted in a need to adjust quantum per subsidy,” she said.

“Additionally, enhancements were added for BNG houses to include burglar bars, water harvesting tanks in rural communities and solar roof panels.” 

In its 2022-23 annual performance plan, the housing department said economic growth after Covid-19 had also affected its ability to provide housing, and the economic outlook does not paint a highly optimistic picture. 

“The risky outlook, coupled with government fiscal imbalances, limits what can be funded. It further gives a fair warning that some of the developmental needs as well as social ills of the country will remain unattended.”

In a budget vote speech last week, Human Settlements Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi said the country’s ailing economy and fiscal constraints had led to budget cuts that would amount to R14  billion in the next three years, which meant the department would “have to do more with less” and find partners so that it could deliver on its mandate. 

The budget allocation for the department increased to R33.1  billion for the 2024-25 financial year, from R31.75  billion. But 96% of that budget is allocated to transfer payments. This consists of conditional grant allocations (R30.1  billion), transfers to entities (R1.5  billion) and other transfers that make up about R10  million. The Emergency Housing Fund budget of R496.7  million constitutes just 1% of the total budget.

The department also noted that although the budget reflected a 4.4% nominal increase, the effects of inflation meant it was down 0.32% in real terms. Regardless, the department said it was still committed to trying to address the significant housing backlog.

Department spokesperson Zulu said the target was to deliver 56  260 units, including serviced sites, in the 2024-25 financial year. 

The Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa said the department would have even less to work with in the two years after the current one, in terms of actual spending power. It flagged this as a critical problem, because it falls on the government to provide affordable housing to South Africa’s growing population, a large chunk of which is cash-strapped and unemployed. 

Several projects around the country are at a standstill because of a shortage of funding, said Nick Budlender, a researcher at Ndifuna Ukwazi, an activist organisation pushing for affordable social housing.

“Officials, policy experts and activists have spent decades developing and refining the social housing programme, working out issues and creating clear systems for development and accessing municipal and other state land,” Budlender said.

“Now that the programme is running relatively smoothly, it still gets very little money, which means that dozens of projects around the country are currently blocked due to a lack of funding.”

The BNG programme caters for households who earn less than R3 500 a month and are mostly located in townships, whereas social housing programmes cater for people earning from R1  850 to R22  000 a month.

“The bigger overall issue is a lack of funding for social housing. In contrast to many of the government’s other housing programmes, which consistently underspend money every year, social housing has a good spending record and yet receives too little funding to ensure the sustainability of the sector,” Budlender added.

He said the rise in illegal land occupations around South Africa “is a direct result of the fact that most people cannot access housing through either the state or the formal private sector”.

“There were 300 informal settlements in 1994 but many more than 3  000 today, which is a clear demonstration that people are having to take their housing situations into their own hands,” he said.

In launching the Breaking New Ground programme in 2004, the department of human settlements acknowledged the slow provision of affordable housing, citing among the reasons the withdrawal of large construction groups from the projects and the process of identifying and acquiring state-owned and private land.

Jabulane Sambo, who also lives in a shack in Tembisa, said he has been waiting for a long time for a proper house.

“It angers me every time someone asks me about RDP housing,” he said. 

“My neighbours, who I went through the process with almost the same years, say they receive the same stories every time. So why should I waste my money to go there only to be disappointed?” 

Sambo lamented the lack of progress despite 30 years of democracy. 

“There is nothing to celebrate when people are still living in inhumane conditions,” he said.